FIG. 1 schematically shows a diagram of traditional oilfield data transmission from oilfield site to the user. Scenario 1 shows physical delivery in which the oilfield data is directly delivered via a physical media to users. The physical media can be CD, DVD, hard-disk, memory stick or flash card, etc. All the digital data including raw measurement, graphic files and additional format support information are packaged together and recorded on a media and physically delivered to the users. The users will then load the media on its computer to access the digital data. However, scenario 1 does not provide real time oilfield data transmission. In addition, the huge size of the data files could increase the cost on hard copy distribution, and generation of physical media takes extra time and money. Further, scenario 1 incurs cost of delivery, and introduces additional security and confidentiality risks.
Scenario 2 shows real time oilfield data transmission via internet. The oilfield data could be uploaded to internet, transmitted via internet, and downloaded by the users. However, if the network bandwidth is not broad enough, scenario 2 cannot allow transmitting large size packages. In addition, scenarios 1 and 2 require extra tools to visualize and analyze those data files, and most of those tools do not allow the users to either interact with the data or dynamically analyze the data.
Scenario 3 allows the user to transmit the data as a stream in real-time and further interpret the stream on the user's station in real-time. However, similar to scenario 2, if the network bandwidth is not broad enough, scenario 3 cannot allow transmitting large size packages.
In addition, there are three approaches today to view media (such as video, audio, animation, documents, etc.) over the internet, namely, downloading, streaming and a hybrid of both.
To view media via downloading, the user has to wait that the entire file is published, transmitted and saved on its computer before being played. Such approach does not satisfy requirement of real-time information access, especially for large files. Streaming can be achieved by embedding special HTML codes into the web page link to the file. Delivery files this way is known as HTTP delivery or HTTP streaming.
The streaming approach works differently and allows the user to access the information and watch it as soon as it begins to be transmitted (downloaded). The streaming approach allows the user a rapid access to the information and can fulfill real-time information delivery in the same way as web-cast or net-cast.
The progressive downloading is a hybrid of the previous 2 methods. The file is downloaded as described in the first method, and can be played as soon as the file is created on the target machine. The drawback is that no “live” real-time transmission can be achieved in this way.
In the field of oilfield data service, as the data are acquired versus time or depth at different index and different acquisition modes (e.g. different frequencies, azimuth, etc.), the user needs to be able to visualize information from these modes together or independently. In classical desktop application, multiple windows or presentation might be open at the same time focusing on different data received. However, this would not cope with several types of oilfield data transmission where information of different types are acquired in parallel but cannot be displayed together without overwhelming the user's display.